There are tonnes of articles / perspectives being shared about the Indian IT/ITES industry which is undergoing slow growth coupled with serious rounds of layoffs. Some perspectives are that nothing is happening which is definitely an Ostrich view of the situation. It is important to remember and acknowledge the folks who built the massive Indian IT industry. They:
- Seized every opportunity that came their way from H1B to Y2K to E commerce and so on.
- The Nasscom leadership were always folks who were building companies in the areas which were critical to the growth and therefore had deep passion/perspective in the space .
- The vertical integration which happened from education (NIIT's of the world) to the Big Tech Firms to Infrastructure was seamless or they made sure it all moved together.
However, this is not happening currently because very few in the top leadership of Nasscom executive council have expertise in:
- Data analytics , Robotics , Artificial Intelligence , Digital (DRAD)
- Hardly anyone has built a company ground up in any of the DRAD areas
- I don't know how much fire most folks in the exec council would have in building expertise in completely new areas
Therefore, to start with, NASSCOM needs to get on it's executive council:
- Experts in DRAD
- Founders of companies which are successful in the above areas
- Educationists who understand who to build skills in DRAD
The workforce is strong and all that it needs is a set of people to come together to build a horizontal chain in the DRAD ecosystem from skill building to business building to policy influence.
The world needs this large pool of talent (demographic dividend) which we have. It just needs some solid entrepreneurial folks to stitch it together with industry backing.
Photo by Danielle MacInnes on Unsplash
This article was written by Gautam Munshi, CEO of Redwood Algorithms.